Economic growth has helped lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. However, many people remain poor, unable to effectively participate in or benefit from economic growth despite being economically active as workers, producers and consumers. Structural inequalities and other constraints – including policy, legal and cultural environments – mean that they lack the inputs, services, skills devel...

Article history: Received 3 April 2008 Received in revised form 23 March 2009 Accepted 1 May 2009 Available online 7 May 2009

A wave of regulatory reform is now transforming the U.S. electricity industry. As state and federal authorities allow independent power producers to compete with utilities in supplying electricity, consumers are paying close attention to the effects of this change on their energy bills. Although deregulation poses significant structural challenges, the introduction of competitive pressures shou...

Distributed energy resources and market deregulation enable traditional electricity consumers to become prosumers (producers/consumers) that can use their idle production capacity or concentrate consumption assets. Emerging provide benefits the system by exchanging energy-related services. More importantly, they do so in a more competitive way than producer/consumer systems. We extend Cournot m...

Bacterial biofilms display a collective lifestyle, wherein the cells secrete extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) that helps in adhesion, aggregation, stability, and to protect the bacteria from antimicrobials. We asked whether the EPS could act as a public good for the biofilm and observed that infiltration of cells that do not produce matrix components weakened the biofilm of Salmonella e...

Biological control of aflatoxin contamination by Aspergillus flavus is achieved through competitive exclusion of aflatoxin producers by atoxigenic strains. Factors dictating the extent to which competitive displacement occurs during host infection are unknown. The role of initial host contact in competition between pairs of A. flavus isolates coinfecting maize kernels was examined. Isolate succ...